The riveting river
Thomas Becknell’s search for meaning in the Mississippi River leads to his deeply personal work on his third book, Enchantments of the Mississippi.
By Maddie Christy and Mady Fortier
Thomas Becknell sprints up the 4th street skywalk into the Pioneer Endicott building. His silver hair flips and flops as he races to grab his Mississippi River map and umbrella.
His eyes are glassy as he returns to his table and opens his Macbook. He begins to read an excerpt in the introduction of his manuscript entitled “Enchantments of the Mississippi.”
“But it’s enchantment I seek more than knowledge or adventure. And it’s not direction as much as significant connection,” Becknell says. “I want to behold the river, perhaps in ways as simple as Jesus’ instruction to behold the lilies, or to behold the ravens. I intend to see it from many different angles and with fullness of wonder. I want to be present with the river — not to navigate it nor to fish it, but to be near it, to follow it and see what it has to reveal.”
He removes his glasses in a moment of silence after he’s finished reading, an elongated silence he uses often in his environmental writing or American literature classrooms at Bethel University. His hands shake. Becknell fumbles to find words after reading work so dear to his heart.
The manuscript hasn’t been published yet. The 10 chapters sit patiently in Becknell’s laptop waiting to be sent to a publisher for approval.
“I’m not too eager to send it in,” Becknell said. “I’ve had two books published before and inevitably editors change things.”
This book is more than work. It’s become his life. In 2012 Becknell was granted a sabbatical to write an essay about the Mississippi River. He has taught the course environmental writing for many years and sought a way to freshen his perspective. He set out to travel and research the river. Little did he know what kind of stories would unfold in the following years.
“And it drew me in. I couldn’t stop.” –Thomas Becknell
“This is my home. Welcome,” Pete Peterson said as he opened the door to his home of 61 years. The facility Becknell visited near Baton Rouge in Carville, Louisiana, had been turned into the National Hansen’s Disease Museum, formerly a hospital which quarantined people suffering from leprosy. Simeon Peterson, or Pete Peterson as he introduced himself, had been cured for years, but stayed in the place that became home to him a long time ago.
In small town Iowa, Becknell found a bookstore. A bookstore that doesn’t sell very many books due to it’s location. McGregor, Iowa, is home to a population of less than 100 people. But the owner of the store insisted its location is its greatest feature — right on the Mississippi River.
Over on Rice Street in St. Paul, Becknell spoke with engineers at the water treatment facility while on a tour.
“The greatest challenge with sanitation is that we can’t clear hormones and antibiotics out of the water,” Becknell said about what he learned. Experts filter the water, but eventually everything that gets dumped in will catch up to us.
“I’d always seen the Mississippi as just a river,” Becknell said. “But the more I looked into it, the more I learned. The more people I met, the more I realized how much the river effects everything and every day. And it drew me in. I couldn’t stop.”
“I am trying to do art, not write a report.” –Thomas Becknell
The information and experiences Becknell gathered were too much to fit in an essay. The excess sat with him and forced him to think about what he could do with all of it. He felt like he had discovered important things that had to write. He wanted to tap into the enthusiasm of the people he met along the banks. He wanted to be able to spend ample time on each facet of the life of the river he discovered.
He began writing his book.
“I am trying to do art, not write a report,” Becknell said. “I am enchanted by the river and I want to give voice to my experience with it.”
Becknell’s life has been changed by the river. Less than two years ago, he moved out of his house in Northeast Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul to a building overlooking the river. Becknell and his wife, Bethel theology professor Pamela Erwin, fondly call their apartment building at the Endicott, their “castle.” Becknell sold his car when they moved, so now he commutes to work on public transportation. A one-way takes 90 minutes, to engage with his environment and to think.
“There are moments when he’s kind of consumed with working on his book all day every day,” Erwin says.
Becknell admits the book consumes him at times.
“I have often been known to get caught up in a day without eating breakfast,” Becknell said. “I start doing things and just forget to eat.”
After saying this, he took a sip from his almost full cold cup of coffee sitting next to his scone with one bite missing after sitting at the table for an hour at the Perkelat coffeeshop.
With a smirk on his face, he said some days he would rather work on writing than go into campus to teach. Luckily, this semester allows some of that. Tuesdays and Thursdays Becknell doesn’t teach a class, so he only goes into the office if required. He prefers to study at the St. Paul Public Library, if he can beat the homeless man there who he often has to fight for a table. Then, he writes.
“He has passion that drives him for understanding the river and how it shapes culture, community, and people,” Erwin says.
Ruth Schaefer, a former student and TA of Becknell’s, finds Becknell’s enthusiasm to be contagious.
“I remember leaving class on my first day of American lit almost speechless,” Schaefer said. “He had just read some of Huck Finn aloud to us and followed it up with the most passionate talk on the vital link between literature, imagination, individual and national identity. My friends and I turned to each other and all we could say was, ‘This guy is like he just stepped right out of Dead Poets Society.’ ”
Kate Holstein sits in Becknell’s modern mythmakers class this fall, but she also took his class American literature last semester.
“Thomas has a passionate curiosity that you can see in his eyes,” Holstein said.
He wants his work to show the way that he’s fallen in love with the river. But more than that he hopes his book will encourage others to encounter the river the way he has. He has learned how much the river has to offer and the stories it has to tell, he longs for other people to be able to experience the river that way.
“Enchantments of the Mississippi” is an invitation into his love affair with rivers.
“I’ve delighted in these gems along the river. They are near and dear to my heart,” Becknell said.
